


The Snowl Queen

by hamsterwoman



Category: Hamster Princess Series - Ursula Vernon
Genre: Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21742792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterwoman/pseuds/hamsterwoman
Summary: “Of course she’s going cliff-diving!” said Harriet. “She’s a lemming, and that’s what lemmings do.”“Qwerrrk,” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for, “I’m pretty sure that’s a myth, and anyway, can’t you see how upset she looks?”
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Snowl Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_rck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/gifts).



> Based on the [the Hans Christian Andersen story](https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/198/the-snow-queen/) (which turned out to contain a lot more plot than I'd remembered :P). 
> 
> Thanks to [redacted] for the beta! 
> 
> Happy Yuletide!

Harriet peered over the edge of a snow-covered cliff. Regular cliff-diving was her favorite hobby, but this time she’d decided to try the winter version for variety, and had ridden Mumfrey, her battle quail, to an arctic kingdom full of snowy mountains and, as Harriet had discovered to her dismay, sandwiches that unexpectedly contained herring. Apparently the herring was a Lemmingrad specialty, though Harriet was rather more impressed with the cliffs. 

Harriet bounced up and down in the fluffy snow a few times, getting ready to cannonball gracefully off the cliff. (Hamsters are not built for grace, but Harriet had perfected her diving form with a determination which would have surprised her deportment teachers, if any of them had had the nerves for cliff-diving as a spectator sport -- or, in fact, for _Harriet_ as a spectator sport.) But just as she was getting ready to jump, something vast and silent glided overhead, obscuring the glare of the low setting sun and sending Mumfrey away from the edge of the cliff with an alarmed Qwerk!

Harriet reached for her sword, but the vast shadow had already moved past and out of reach. Harriet could see now that it was an enormous owl, white with ripples of black all over its great wings, like a page written sloppily in ink. Nestled on the owl’s back was a small dark shape, and Harriet was briefly jealous that some other rodent had worked out a way to ride such an imposing bird. (She would never admit this to Mumfrey, of course, but Harriet thought an owl, with its silent flight, would be a very useful companion for sneaking up on ogre-cats, who by now had learned to barricade themselves inside their lairs whenever they heard Harriet coming.) 

Then Harriet had no time to consider the strategic advantage of sneak owl attacks, because Mumfrey gave a warning qwerk. Harriet spun around and saw a small rodent scurrying towards her and Mumfrey. The figure was still quite far off, but seemed to be headed right for the edge of the cliff.

“Owl riders, other people who enjoy cliff-diving -- I’m starting to like this country,” Harriet said to Mumfrey. “Even if they do have some odd ideas about sandwiches.” 

“Qwerk?” replied Mumfrey dubiously. 

“Of course she’s going cliff-diving!” said Harriet. “She’s a lemming, and that’s what lemmings do.”

“Qwerrrk,” said Mumfrey, which is Quail for, “I’m pretty sure that’s a myth, and anyway, can’t you see how upset she looks?” 

Which was true: the running lemming was now close enough for Harriet to see that the frozen droplets glittering in her whiskers were probably tears. 

“Hey, there!” Harriet called, stepping away from the edge of the cliff and into the lemming’s path. “If you’re going cliff-diving--” But she didn’t get any further than that, because at that moment the lemming barreled into her, knocking her over into Mumfrey, and the three of them went down in a heap of fur, feathers, and churned up snow. 

The distraught lemming disentangled herself first, climbed to her feet, and immediately grabbed Harriet’s hand. 

“Please!” she said, “I need to borrow your quail. The Snowl Queen has taken my friend Mus, and I will never catch up with them on foot!” 

Harriet, who had been brushing snow out of her ears grumpily, brightened at once. “A quest!” she said excitedly. It had been _weeks_ since she’d encountered rumors of a dragon-menacing princess or come across a frail old lady who acted emphatically helpless suspiciously far from town, and Harriet was starting to worry that at this rate her questing skills would get rusty. “Hop on! Let’s go rescue your friend!”

Mumfrey was a bold and experienced riding quail, but even a heroic and battle-hardened quail, carrying the load of Harriet, Harriet’s questing and cliff-diving gear, and a second passenger through snowdrifts and flurries, cannot match the speed of a snowy owl in flight. Soon they could no longer even see the speck of the Snowl Queen ahead of them in the clouds, and not long after that, the sky turned full dark and they were forced to stop for the night. 

That evening by the fire, Harriet shared the last of her snacks with Mumfrey and their new companion. The lemming, Lena, in turn shared her tale of woe, sniffling periodically between bites of birdseed-chocolate cupcake. 

Lena described how she and her friend Mus grew up next door to each other, spending all their free time listening to Grandmother’s stories, playing games (checkers and mancala and something called sáhkku) and putting jigsaw puzzles together. Lots and lots of jigsaw puzzles, it sounded like to Harriet. 

That afternoon, Lena and Mus had been working on a jigsaw puzzle Mus had been busy with for a week and had nearly completed. It was a picture of a crowded carnival, made out of 3,000 pieces, and Lena had counted only two hundred and five in the pile of unused pieces Mus was storing in the lid. (“41/600ths to go,” Harriet calculated automatically.) Lena had been sorting through the pile in the lid for likely-looking pieces and Mus had been fitting them in place while Grandmother told them stories. As the wind started howling in their chimney, Grandmother had told a tale about a wicked dwarf hamster who had made a mirror which reflected everything beautiful as something ugly, and about the Snowl Queen flying across the winter skies in a flock of white snowflakes, painting frosty designs on window panes and chilling the world. 

“I wonder if the Snowl Queen could come inside if a window were left open,” Lena had said, shivering a bit and looking at Mus. 

Mus had been frowning at a jigsaw piece that might’ve been a part of a flower bed, or a lemming lady’s bonnet, or possibly a piece of a Ferris wheel in the distance. “If the Snowl Queen comes inside,” he had said absently, fitting the jigsaw piece above the lemming lady’s head, “I will melt her with the heat from the stove until she turns into a puddle. Lena, find me the rest of the Ferris wheel.” 

“How about a game of checkers?” Lena had asked. “Or, look, it’s snowing! Do you want to go sledding?” 

“Sure, after we finish the puzzle,” Mus had mumbled into the unsorted pieces. “It’s almost done. Have you found the Ferris wheel yet?”

Lena had been looking at the frosty patterns which had appeared on the outside of the window and had reached for the window latch. “I wanted a closer look,” she explained to Harriet, very insistently. “To see if they really were in the shape of owl feathers, like in Grandmother’s story.” 

As soon as Lena had lifted the latch, a powerful gust of wind had knocked the window open, blowing in skirls of snow. Lena had staggered back, shutting her eyes against the stinging ice shards, and bumped into Mus. 

“I’m not sure what happened,” Lena confessed to Harriet and Mumfrey. “Maybe the wind blew the jigsaw puzzle onto the floor, or maybe Mus accidentally knocked it down when I bumped into him… Anyway, it fell down and blew apart. But the worst thing that happened was that Mus got a piece of evil magic mirror in his eye and in his heart, just like in the story.”

“A piece of an evil magic mirror?” Harriet asked dubiously. She had encountered some magic mirrors in her dealings with witches and fairy god-mothers, and in her experience they tended to be talkative and nosy and ready to volunteer unsolicited opinions about one’s appearance, but not particularly evil.

“Oh, yes!” said Lena. “The wicked dwarf hamster dropped his magic mirror, which shattered into a million pieces. Whoever got a piece of evil mirror lodged in their eye started seeing the things they had thought beautiful as ugly, and whoever got a piece of evil mirror lodged in their heart stopped loving everything they had loved before. A piece of evil mirror must’ve blown in with the snow when I opened the window, because Mus pushed me and called me stupid and said he never wanted to play with me again. And then he dumped all the puzzle pieces in the box and went right outside, into the blizzard. Mus and I have always been best friends! He would never say such awful things if not for an evil mirror.” 

It sounded to Harriet that, whatever his feelings about Lena, Mus had still loved his jigsaw puzzles, though she decided there was no point in mentioning that. But something still wasn’t adding up (and Harriet was someone who was excellent at adding things up, whether those things were clues to a quest or fractions with different denominators). 

“I’ve met a lot of people who were enchanted or under a curse,” Harriet said. “Twelve whole enchanted mouse princesses at once, for example. People aren’t rude just because they’re under a curse.”

“Qwerrrk,” said Mumfrey, rather snidely, which is Quail for, “People said you were rude all the time when you were under your curse.”. 

“That doesn’t count,” said Harriet. “I wasn’t rude _because_ of a curse. And anyway, that wasn’t being rude, that was being direct, which is an excellent quality in a hero. But never mind about that. Where does the Snowl Queen come into all this?”

“The Snowl Queen was flying amidst the snowflakes, just like in Grandmother’s story,” said Lena. “I was watching through the window as she snatched Mus up in her talons. I ran after them, and-- Oh, it’s all my fault! If I hadn’t opened the window, Mus wouldn’t have a piece of evil mirror in his heart, and he wouldn’t have gone outside to be stolen by the Snowl Queen. Please help me bring him back!” 

“Nothing to it,” said Harriet, who had rescued maidens from dragons and enchanted harps from ogres and weasel-wolves from Grandmothers, and did not anticipate rescuing a lemming from a Snowl Queen being that far outside her field of expertise. “In the morning we’ll start asking for directions to the Snowl Queen’s palace.” 

* * *

The next morning it took Harriet, Mumfrey, and Lena some time to find a person to ask for directions. All they encountered for the first few hours after resuming their search was heaps of snow and the occasional distant caw from a black bird flying overhead. But eventually they did come across a cozy-looking cottage in the woods. Lena rushed up to knock, and the door was opened by a plump and smiling elderly mouse wearing a straw gardener’s hat (which Harriet thought was rather odd for the season) and holding a mug of deliciously steaming tea. 

“Please, ma’am,” Lena said urgently. “The Snowl Queen has taken my friend Mus, and we are trying to get him back. Can you tell us where to find him?”

“Oh dear!” said the cheerful old lady. “You poor things look half-frozen. Come in and have some cookies and tea! I just made lavender shortbread. We can talk about where to find your friend right after.” 

Harriet’s adventures had brought her to any number of isolated buildings occupied by an assortment of eccentric older ladies, from the Crone of the Blighted Waste (who always had the best chocolate chip cookies for Harriet and Mumfrey and never asked questions about why Harriet was covered in thorn scratches, or feathers, or ogre-cat slobber) to the forest witches inclined towards confectionary architecture who occasionally needed Harriet’s help getting rid of trespassing kids gnawing on their support beams, to the kind of people who thought it was a good idea to live in a tower accessible only by climbing a very long tail. Harriet had developed a sense about these things, and that sense was telling her that there was something shady] about this smiling old lady and her warm, welcoming cottage. But they _had_ been getting rather chilled, trudging through the snow, and the lavender shortbread smelled amazing, so after exchanging a suspicious glance with Mumfrey, Harriet followed Lena inside—

\--and then right out the back door, into a garden that was full of blooming flower beds, boisterously climbing pea plants, apple and plum trees bent down by the weight of fruit on their branches, several enormous sunflowers, and a profusion of other vegetation. The air was humid and warm, like standing in a greenhouse, except there were no glass walls separating the summer garden from the snowy woods just beyond the little cottage’s picket-fenced yard. (“I knew it!” Harriet whispered to Mumfrey. “I knew she had to be a witch or a fairy.”) At the center of the garden stood a picnic table, covered in a tablecloth patterned with roses and frolicking newts. 

“Make yourself at home!” the mouse said with a smile. “Sit down, warm up, have some cookies. I’ll put on more tea.”

Lena sat, accepted a cup of chamomile tea, and thanked their hostess politely. “But please,” she said, “can you tell us how to get to the Snowl Queen’s palace? My friend has a shard of ice in his heart, and I’m worried that if we don’t get to him in time, it will freeze his heart solid and he’ll become mean forever.”

“I still don’t think curses work that way,” Harriet muttered to Mumfrey, who qwerked in agreement. 

“Of course, my dears,” said the mouse reassuringly, pouring Harriet a cup of tea. “Just as soon as I get this pie out of the oven.”

“Yes, please, of course,” Lena said. “This shortbread is delicious. Could I have the recipe for Grandmother? We have lavender growing on our window sill, and my friend… my friend really loves… I think I have a friend who likes the smell? It’s really wonderful with this chamomile tea.” 

“Just wait until you try my pluot pie,” the mouse said proudly. “It’ll be just a few more minutes baking, but of course you have to wait for it to cool. And then I’ll write down both recipes for you. More tea?”

Lena extended her cup for more and sipped serenely. 

Harriet frowned, nibbling on her shortbread cookie and brushing at her whiskers, which were tingling oddly. Something wasn’t quite right here. Hadn’t they been on their way somewhere? The lavender in the shortbread did smell amazing, though, and the chamomile tea was making her feel wonderfully warm and relaxed. This was her third piece of shortbread, and Lena’s second, and Mumfrey’s fourth, and there were still six more cookies on the plate, which meant they had eaten 3/5th of the shortbread, collectively. But Harriet definitely still had room for freshly baked pie, if it was as good as the shortbread, which it probably would be, since their hostess seemed to be as serious about her baking as she was about her gardening. Harriet wondered which of the fruit trees in the garden grew pluots, and whether the gardeners at Hamsterbone Castle knew what pluots were. 

“Here, my dears, all ready to eat,” said the mouse, bringing over a tray on which a plump pie and a tea kettle steamed enticingly. “And while you’re working on that, I’ll start on the zucchini bread.” 

Harriet hadn’t remembered seeing the mouse leave the garden. She looked at Lena, who was still peacefully drinking her tea, and at the empty plate in front of them. Where had the other 2/5th of the shortbread gone? When had they finished off the previous kettle of tea? And wasn’t there something they were meant to be doing instead of sitting here, in an improbably warm garden, enjoying delicious baked goods?

“You’ve been enchanting us!” Harriet exclaimed, leaping up from her seat at the picnic table and reaching for her sword. “We only stopped here to ask for directions to the Snowl Queen’s palace.” 

“Qwer-er-erk!” Mumfrey added, which is Quail for, “I think the tea and shortbread are making us forget things!” 

“Now, now,” said the mouse, plunking the pie down directly in front of Harriet. “The Snowl Queen’s palace is a very unpleasant place, and you are much better off staying with me here. I know you’ll agree as soon as you try my pie, and my zucchini bread, and my tomatoes. People these days are constantly in a rush to get somewhere, but a little soothing tea and a few lavender cookies always help them slow down and enjoy life.”

Harriet considered whether it would be rude to threaten with a sword someone who had just served her admittedly delicious cookies (and almost-certainly-delicious pie), and whether it made a difference that the cookies (and possibly also the pie) had been enchanted. She was pretty sure her mother would still consider it unforgivably poor manners. 

“Of course, _some_ people need more time to come around to the idea of relaxing and enjoying life,” the mouse continued, “out of sheer bloody-mindedness. But not to worry, my dear. I’ll just mix up another batch of my lavender shortbread, and that should do it even for you. Just stay here and eat your pie for now.” Still wearing her grandmotherly smile, the mouse waved a hand at the garden and turned back to go inside. 

A very peculiar noise came from the fence surrounding the garden, all around the perimeter at once. The last time Harriet and Mumfrey had heard that noise, they had not been able to recognize it, but now they did: it was the sound of briars growing with magical speed. 

“Ugh!” Harriet groaned. She looked around for an axe to use against the briars (she’d learned, in hacking her way out of the briar-wrapped castle on her twelfth birthday, that swords were a much better weapon against ogre-cats and dragons than against magically growing vegetation), but found only a sharp shovel. Well, it would have to do. She grabbed it and rushed to attack the encroaching thorns before the three of them could be trapped inside the garden. 

“Why do people keep thinking magical briars are a solution to anything?” Harriet muttered, hacking away at the branches with the shovel. “My father is still fretting about the foundation of our castle, and I had to move out of my tower room—“ 

The mouse had stopped in the doorway to her cottage and was watching Harriet’s battle with the briars with sudden alarm. 

“Oh my!” she exclaimed. “You don’t mean to say that you’re Harriet Hamsterbone? _That_ hamster princess? But the Fairy God-Mouse Bulletin didn’t mention anything about you visiting Lemmingrad!” 

Harriet paused in her hacking, as the briars had stopped creakily growing and intertwining. She didn’t know whether to be proud or a little insulted that the fairy god-mouse community found it necessary to issue bulletins about her. After all, she’d only thrown Ratshade into the cursed hamster wheel in self-defense, and losing the Poncho of Invisibility had been an accident, and Harriet was almost completely certain the shrew fairy had forgiven her for that by now. 

“I’m Harriet Hamsterbone,” she confirmed. “Could you stop with the briars thing? I know I can chop my way through them, because I’ve done it before, but I’d really rather not. And nobody can explain why the middle fairy god-mouse thought they would be any help at all.” 

“That was my sister, actually,” the fairy god-mouse said, sounding a bit put out. “And it’s a very environmentally friendly approach.” 

But she whistled, the way one would to a hunting newt, and the briars obediently unwound themselves, clearing a path to the picket fence and its neat little gate. 

“I suppose you’ll be on your way, then,” the fairy god-mouse sighed. “I will brew some mint tea to wake up your lemming friend. But take the pie with you, at least – it’s not enchanted. And maybe some tomatoes and zucchini?” she added hopefully. “And I have some organic cabbages from my sister.” 

“Just the pie, thank you,” said Harriet firmly. It seemed like the sort of diplomatic gesture her mother would want her to make, and also the pie did smell delicious. 

Harriet felt more clear-headed and less lazy with every sip of the mint tea, but that was nothing compared to Lena’s reaction. The lemming, who had been sitting placidly at the picnic table, started and almost dropped her cup.

“We have to go after Mus,” she cried. “Oh, we’ve lost so much time! Won’t you help us find him?”

“The Snowl Queen’s palace is not something we fairy god-mice know about,” their hostess admitted, wrapping up the pluot pie. But she told them how to find a wise raven, who she was sure would either know the Snowl Queen’s whereabouts or be able to give them a very good lead. “He gossips terribly,” the fairy god-mouse said, “and if anything has been happening around here, he is sure to know about it. Now, are you sure you don’t want some zucchini?”

* * *

Harriet, Mumfrey, and Lena managed to escape the summer cottage without further adventures, and, even more impressively, without zucchini. They had spent almost a whole day trapped by the garden fairy mouse, but at least their next destination proved easy to find. The raven actually found _them_ , just a short walk from the enchanted cottage. Harriet guessed he had probably seen the commotion with the briars and had flown over to see what was going on.

“Ah, yes,” the Wise Raven said, after Lena explained that she was looking for a boy about her age, kind and cheerful and very clever. “I think I know just the one. Our princess married him just today – it’s the talk of the town. He was exceedingly clever, and so she instantly fell in love with him. It was a story for the ages.” 

“Qwerkkk!” said Mumfrey, which is Quail for, “That can’t possibly be true.” But Harriet had heard of princesses getting married for even more ridiculous reasons, so she was not so sure. 

Harriet and Mumfrey guided a distraught Lena to Lemmingrad Palace. (“Oh!” Lena lamented, “if Mus is now a prince, he will never want to play with me again. But I hope the love of the princess has melted the shard of ice in his heart. If he is back to himself, then I don’t care if I have to call him His Highness from now on.”) 

Fortunately, the royal guards at the gate were quite willing to be convinced by Harriet’s tiara, rather than her somewhat bedraggled appearance, and the three of them were admitted to an audience with Princess Lidwina at once. 

“I’m afraid I haven’t seen anyone named Mus,” the princess said, when Lena explained who she was looking for. “And I also haven’t married anyone after only just meeting them. That is absurd, however clever they may be! I think that silly old raven must have been talking about the visiting prince. But Wilbur isn’t here to marry me! He’s here because we needed some help shoveling the snow.” 

“Wilbur!” Harriet exclaimed, at the same time as Mumfrey let out a joyful “Qwerk!”, knowing that if Wilbur was there, so was Hyacinth, Prince Wilbur’s riding quail and Mumfrey’s friend. 

Wilbur was brought in from the stableyard, still holding a snow shovel and looking very confused. But the look of confusion faded at once when he spotted Harriet in the throne room. “Well, that explains it,” Wilbur said. “I guess Hyacinth and I are coming along on another perilous quest.” 

“You don’t _have_ to,” Harriet allowed magnanimously, “but we are going to rescue a lemming from the Snowl Queen’s palace and possibly also become the first rodents to voluntarily ride an owl, and I’m sure you and Hyacinth wouldn’t want to miss that.” 

“I guess I was almost done shoveling the snow anyway,” said Wilbur, resigned. “And I’ve earned enough to pay for fixing the new leaks in our castle’s basement, so we might as well come with you and try to help. The Snowl Queen is a monarch, after all, and sometimes you are not very… courtly.” 

Princess Lidwina was so touched by the story of Lena’s devotion to her friend that she insisted Lena and her companions spend the night at the palace and accept a gift of a golden carriage, as well as several packets of sandwiches for the road, most of which did not contain herring (Harriet checked). The golden carriage was quite unwieldy and almost painful to look at in the bright morning light, but it was even harder to turn down a golden carriage politely than it was homegrown zucchini, so in the end they were stuck with it. Wilbur harnessed Mumfrey and Hyacinth to pull it, whispering an apology to each quail for the heavy weight and the ostentatiousness.

“I’ve heard the Snowl Queen’s palace is built right on the North Pole,” Princess Lidwina said. “In any case, I think you probably can’t go wrong if you just ride north: sooner or later you will run into someone who knows the way for sure.” 

This seemed like sound, if somewhat optimistic, advice. Wilbur climbed up into the coachman’s seat, Lena and Harriet bundled into the golden carriage, and they were off, aiming straight north.  


* * *

Golden carriages are not very practical things. Of course, this carriage wasn’t made out of solid gold, but it was gilded and festooned with useless gold ornaments, so it was still heavier than it needed to be, much to Mumfrey and Hyacinth’s disgust. It was also bound to attract a certain amount of attention, and when you were traveling through the wilderness, all alone, that attention was likely to be unwanted. 

The band of robbers surrounded the golden carriage as it was trundling down the road through a dense forest, dark even in the middle of the day. The packrat bandits had guessed, reasonably enough, that anyone driving a golden carriage through the wild with no guards in sight was likely to be an easy mark, and probably also not very bright (unlike the carriage). 

They had not been prepared for Mumfrey attacking them with a fierce QWERRRK!, battering them with his wings and pecking at their heads with well-practiced aim. They had definitely not been prepared for the mild-looking coachman wildly swinging his whip at the attackers. And when the filigree golden doors of the carriage burst open and Harriet leapt out, brandishing her sword and throwing herself into the thick of the action – well, the pack of bandits regretted their choices even more. Hyacinth had learned a lot of fighting tricks from Mumfrey in their shared adventures, and even Lena proved quite fierce, attacking the nearest bandit with a wild shriek. The robbers outnumbered Harriet’s crew four to one, but in the end it wasn’t much of a contest. 

Mumfrey and Harriet tied up the defeated bandits with ropes they found in the carriage (the ropes had golden tassels on them, which made Wilbur snort in disgust). Fully half of the packrats had feathers stuck all over them from the scuffle with the quail, and 7/10th of them were nursing bruised tails from their encounters with Harriet, and 100% of them looked absolutely miserable. Actually, Harriet corrected herself, the bandits looked 97.5% miserable: the littlest robber had been staring at Harriet adoringly ever since seeing her fight three bandits at once, and was thus looking only half-miserable at most. 

“Maybe the robbers took Mus captive and are holding him for ransom,” Lena said hopefully. 

Harriet and Wilbur rat-marched the robbers to the bandits’ lair (rat-marching is rather like frog-marching, except you have to be careful not to step on your prisoners’ tails). There they found jewels and gold, piled up in untidy heaps, an extensive menagerie which turned out to belong to the littlest bandit, and no lemmings at all, captive or enchanted or otherwise. 

“Mus must still be with the Snowl Queen, then,” Lena sighed. “It’s been three days -- his heart is probably frozen forever by now, and we still don’t know how to get to the Snowl Queen’s palace!” 

The white bird dozing in the corner of the menagerie suddenly looked up and cocked his head. He looked something like an elongated and much larger quail, except for being all white and missing the topknot, and the sound he made was something like a quail’s Qwerk, too, except that Harriet could make no sense of it. . 

“Qwer-eet!” said the strange white bird. 

Mumfrey and Hyacinth shrugged -- they couldn’t understand him either. But Lena gasped suddenly and clutched at Harriet’s arm. 

The littlest bandit cleared her throat. “My ptarmigan says he knows the way to the Snowl Queen’s palace,” she said. “He could even take you there.” 

“QWER!” the ptarmigan agreed. 

“Oh, yes!” Lena exclaimed. “If he can take us to the Snowl Queen, we will let all of you go and let you keep the golden carriage, just as long as we can leave right away!”

Harriet was all too happy to leave the golden carriage behind, but she was not so sure about just letting the bandits go. 

“You have to promise not to attack people riding through the forest,” said Harriet. “Not unless they look like they can give you a good fight.”

“And to only keep birds in your menagerie if they’ve said they want to stay with you,” Wilbur put in, after Hyacinth’s quiet Qwerk. “And if you’re bored here in the forest, you could go to Princess Lidwina’s palace and finish shoveling her stableyard. She will probably be happy to give you some useless golden things for it,” he added, looking at the packrats’ piles of treasure. 

The robbers were all nodding eagerly and inching closer to their heaps of gold. Lena, Harriet, and Wilbur untied them all, and the littlest bandit got the ptarmigan saddled. 

“His name is Kvitha,” she told Lena, handing over the reins, “and he is the swiftest ptarmigan in the Arctic. He says he can get you to the Snowl Queen’s palace in less than a day of shlopping.” 

Of course, the smaller quail could not keep up with Kvitha’s shlopping pace, no matter how Mumfrey and Hyacinth pushed themselves. The six of them spent one very cold night huddled together under the ptarmigan’s wings. (Harriet even missed the stupid golden carriage.) The second night, they spent in a cozy cabin they found along the way, well-stocked with firewood and birdseed. Harriet’s fingers thawed enough that she even wrote a letter home, concentrating on things like being fed homemade lavender shortbread and bumping into Wilbur and omitting things like getting attacked by bandits and chasing a magical owl. 

“How do you spell ptarmigan?” Harriet asked Mumfrey, because it was always a good idea to get a second opinion on such things.

“QWERK-QWERK-QWERK-QWERK-QWERK-- Qwerrrrk?” said Mumfrey, which is Quail for, “P-T-A-R-M-- Wait, no, that doesn’t look like a real word.” 

On the third day Kvitha, running smoothly over the snow, the two quail shlopping behind him, crested a snowbank and stopped. In front of the riders rose the Snowl Queen’s palace.

Harriet had expected to see a towering castle made of glittering ice, bristling with turrets and ramparts and flying buttresses (in all honesty, Harriet was not too sure what buttresses were, but it was a fun word to say, even inside her head, and she guessed any respectable magical palace would have them). The building they saw was definitely built of ice and sparkled in the low sun so intensely that it hurt to look straight at it. But it was more of an ice _house_ than an ice palace -- narrow, four storeys tall, with an ordinary gabled roof padded with fluffy snow, a single front door, unguarded by stoats or sables, and nothing like a drawbridge or a moat filled with snow piranhas. (Harriet was almost certain there was no such thing as snow piranhas, but she figured one of the perks of being a Snowl Queen was having the ability to fill your magical moat with them anyway. In fact, Harriet was quite disappointed by their apparent lack. What was the point of having mastery over snow and ice if one’s didn’t use it to make a moat filled with snow piranhas?) Lena, Wilbur, the quail and the ptarmigan also stopped and stared, equally surprised. 

Well, sometimes these things happened: Harriet herself had many times visited the Crone of the Blighted Waste in her very cozy home that always smelled of fresh-baked cookies. But as far as they knew, Mus was still trapped inside with the Snowl Queen, and even if he was trapped inside an ordinary-looking ice house and not a palace guarded by snow piranhas, he still needed Harriet to rescue him. 

“Come on,” said Harriet to her companions. “Let’s go get your friend out of there and get him thawed, or de-enchanted, or whatever it’s gonna take.” 

They marched up to the door of the ice house. The door was a solid sheet of ice, but when Harriet knocked on it with the pommel of her sword, it swung inward with the creaking, crackling sound of a frozen pond when it’s been stepped on by a hamster wearing several throwing axes about her person. A corridor led inside, illuminated by a greenish light refracted through multiple facets of ice. Harriet thought the icosahedron lanterns were pretty cool, but they left the Snowl Queen’s house bathed in an eerie gloom. She would’ve actually preferred having to fight snow piranhas. 

The six of them moved carefully along the corridor. There was no sign of the Snowl Queen or of Mus. The only thing they could see was a succession of intricate paintings of winter scenes lining both sides of the hallway: white stoats lurking among snow-covered bushes, a troika of ptarmigans pulling a sleigh, a crowded ice rink under light snow, a gaggle of white mice wearing white fur earmuffs admiring the frosty designs on a window, and painting after painting of houses and bridges and roads and trees covered in snow. 

“This place is creepy,” Harriet muttered. “Nobody needs that many pictures of white things on the walls.” 

“All the furniture in your bedroom has axes sticking out of it,” Wilbur whispered. “I don’t think you get to judge other people’s interior decorating choices.” 

At the very end of the corridor they found a door standing slightly ajar. Harriet tried to push it open, but, like the front door, it was made of solid ice, so she had to nudge it instead with her sword. The door swung open with the same frozen-pond crackle, and revealed a cavernous room with more winter paintings on all the walls, with a long table and solitary chair standing in the center. In the chair sat a very miserable-looking lemming, bent over an enormous jigsaw puzzle. 

“Mus!” Lena cried, pushing Harriet out of the way and rushing to his side. 

The lemming looked up at them morosely and then turned back to the table, hunching over the jigsaw puzzle. 

“Oh, it’s all my fault your heart is so frozen that you don’t even recognize me!” Lena exclaimed, fresh tears sliding down her whiskers and freezing solid in the frigid air of the Snowl Queen’s house. 

Mus looked up, without relaxing his hunch. “Of course I recognize you,” he mumbled. “How could I not recognize you when we've spent our whole lives living next door to each other and playing together. But… aren’t you mad at me?” 

“Of course I’m not mad at you!” Lena said. “It’s not like you could help being enchanted. It’s just like in Grandmother’s story -- a shard of the evil mirror flew in with the snow and got in your eye and made you hate me, so you pushed me and called me names.”

Harriet, who was still very dubious about the evil mirror idea, was watching Mus carefully as he listened to Lena’s breathless explanation, so she caught the moment when he peered up at Lena with a kind of sly hope, looking like he was about to say something, and then saw him hesitate, before slumping down again in resignation. 

“There wasn’t any evil mirror piece,” he said, very quietly. “You bumped into me and knocked the puzzle over on the floor, when I’d been working on it for nearly a week and was almost done, and it was the trickiest one I’d ever put together. So I was mad, even though I knew it was an accident, but once I’d pushed you and yelled at you, I felt terrible, but I didn’t know what to say. I thought you’d hate me forever!”

“You probably _should_ hate me forever,” he added, looking up at Lena at last. “But I’m really glad that you came and found me here, even if you do hate me forever now that you know it wasn’t something an evil mirror made me do. It’s been really lonely and cold.” 

Lena was crying in earnest now.Wilbur, the quail, and the ptarmigan tactfully turned away, and even Harriet busied herself with examining the pictures on the wall more closely. They could still hear Lena take a deep breath as she answered Mus.

“It wasn’t an accident,” she said in a trembling voice. “Or, not completely an accident. I didn’t want to destroy your whole puzzle, but you had your head stuck in it all week, and you didn’t want to play anything else, and you were barely listening to me or to Grandmother’s stories, and I was really bored just sitting there and handing you pieces! I thought if I opened the window, you’d put the puzzle away, and we could go sledding, or play something that wouldn’t get blown away by a draft.”

Harriet peeked at the lemmings out of the corner of her eye and saw Lena wipe her eyes and touch Mus’s shoulder lightly. “I’m glad you’re not under an evil mirror curse,” she said, “even if it means it was really you who yelled at me. I won’t hate you forever if you won’t hate me forever for ruining your jigsaw puzzle, and if you promise not to be mean to me again, and if we can take a break from jigsaw puzzles for at least a couple of months.” 

Mus nodded solemnly, brushing tears off his whiskers, and the two lemmings snuggled together, sniffling. 

“Qwerk,” said Hyacinth, which is Quail for, “Isn’t that lovely -- they worked it all out!” 

“Qwer!” Kvitha agreed, spreading his wings over the two quail. 

“Except,” Mus said tentatively, “I do have to finish _this_ jigsaw puzzle. The Snowl Queen brought me here to finish it for her, and she said that until it’s done, she won’t let me out, and neither will the house. I’ve been working on it this entire time, but it’s a 31,000 piece puzzle and everything is covered in snow, and I think she’s lost some of the pieces. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to finish it, so now you’re probably trapped in here with me. Forever.” 

“I have an idea,” Harriet said. While she’d been examining the paintings on the walls to avoid looking at Mus and Lena’s tearful reconciliation, she had noticed tell-tale curvy lines running through all the scenes. They weren’t just paintings -- they were jigsaw puzzles! 

She climbed on Mumfrey’s back and unsheathed her sword. 

“Hey, Snowl Queen!” she yelled, “Hey, Snowl Queen’s house! If you don’t let all of us go, right now, I’m going to smash all these frames, and unjigsaw all these pictures, until all that’s left of them is a pile of pieces on the floor, all mixed up. Good luck sorting all of them out! You have two hundred of these things hanging on your walls at least -- that’s only a one half percent chance of even getting each piece matched to the right puzzle, when they’re all pictures of snow.”

There was a loud, sharp snap somewhere above the ceiling, like the world’s largest icicle breaking off, and suddenly the room was full of white feathers and chill wind. The enormous space suddenly felt much smaller. The hamsters and the quail edged back to stand closer to Lena and Mus, and even the ptarmigan shuffled away. 

“Now that’s quite rude,” said the Snowl Queen, “to barge into someone’s home and threaten to destroy their decorations.” 

She was as large as an ogre-cat, with hypnotic yellow eyes and a sharp black beak like an enormous deadly sickle, and with ripples of black underlining the white feathers of her wings. The Snowl Queen looked like she could swallow lemmings, hamsters, and quail whole, and she also looked _angry_. 

“Not as rude as kidnapping people to do jigsaw puzzles for you!” Lena shouted, stepping forward. “And keeping them prisoner until they finish!” 

“Well!” the Snowl Queen huffed. “It is also _quite_ rude to say that one is going to melt someone with a stove for merely looking into the windows of one’s house. But I most certainly did not kidnap anyone! I brought my little lemming friend here to work on jigsaw puzzles in peace, since he wasn’t getting to do so at home.” 

“Your friend!” Lena exclaimed. “Why, you don’t even know his name!” 

“I don’t,” the Snowl Queen conceded. “But you are standing in my house, and you don’t know mine, either.” 

“That’s right!” Wilbur said quickly. “None of us have been properly introduced, which is very rude of us. I’m Wilbur, and that’s Harriet, Lena, Mus, Mumfrey, Hyacinth, and Kvitha. How do you do, Your Snowy Majesty.” 

The Snowl Queen managed to look at once startled and mollified, which was a particularly odd look on her sharply beaked face. 

“Quite well, thank you,” she said, unfluffling herself a little bit. “My name is Owlga. Do have a seat, since you are all here.” 

Blocks of ice sprang up from the floor and carved themselves into the vague shape of chairs. Lena continued hovering by Mus’s side, and Harriet remained strategically positioned within a swordblade’s reach of the jigsaw puzzles on the wall. Wilbur, having appointed himself the voice of reason, perched on the edge of one icy chair. It was just as uncomfortable as it looked. 

“Since it was all a regretful misunderstanding,” he ventured, “perhaps we should get going. It will be dark soon, and the forests are full of bandits and robbers--” 

“No!” Owlga snapped her beak and mantled her wings with such force that Wilbur rocked back in his icy chair and even Harriet startled. “Nobody’s leaving until we finish my jigsaw puzzle! I mean,” she added, rearranging her wings and preening her disordered feathers, “that I think some of the pieces have rolled into corners I can’t reach, and I need dextrous little rodent hands to find them for me.” 

“You know,” Harriet said, hefting her sword meaningfully, “when my parents invite the bat ambassador for a game of batgammon, or the neighboring kings and queens to play cards, they don’t just grab them and lock them up inside the great hall. They put out some tea and cookies, and little sandwiches, and keep asking whether their guests want the string quartet to play a different tune, and make really boring small talk about rampart upkeep.”

“Even Harriet doesn’t actually drag people into her room at swordpoint to play checkers with her,” Wilbur put in. 

“Oh, very well,” Owlga huffed. She snapped her wings open and closed, and a smaller ice table appeared next to the one with the jigsaw puzzle, laden with snowflake-shaped cookies decorated with white icing, triangular sandwiches as sharp and precise as icicles, a pitcher of birch juice, and a steaming silver samovar which somehow did not melt the table underneath it. 

The rodents approached the spread tentatively. Harriet snagged a snowflake cookie and fed half of it to Mumfrey. Wilbur bit into a triangular sandwich and set it aside after some demonstrative chewing. “Herring,” he whispered to Harriet. “It’s like something Ratpunzel would think was a good idea…” 

Owlga’s wings mantled again, and mugs made of ice and brimming with hot tea now stood on the table. “Help yourselves. Don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything else you need.” She perched at one end of the table, tall enough that she did not need a chair, and snapped a snowflake cookie in half with her beak. 

It was difficult not to thaw towards someone a bit while drinking their tea and eating their cookies. Mus wandered back to the table with the jigsaw puzzle and fit another piece into place. Wilbur drifted over and filled in a missing section. Kvitha pecked at a jigsaw piece to get Lena’s attention, and then at a spot on the table to show where it should go. Owlga worked on a corner of the puzzle, humming to herself. Harriet played to her strengths by prowling the house, and found a missing piece under the ice sofa in one of the other rooms. Mumfrey found another one wedged underneath a door. The scene on the table continued to fill out: three white mice building a snowmouse next to a snow-covered house and lightpost, while a snowball battle played out in the distance. 

“We’re 112/125th of the way done!” Harriet cheered on the others, setting in place a jigsaw piece which showed a snowball smacking a guinea pig in the head.

“You know what always makes a jigsaw puzzle go faster?” Lena said wistfully. “Grandmother’s stories. And she must be so worried about Mus and me...”

The Snowl Queen snapped her wings, and an elderly lemming appeared next to the table, with her own ice chair and mug of tea. 

“What did we say about _inviting_ people instead of abducting them?” Wilbur muttered. But Grandmother was so overjoyed to see Lena and Mus, and they her, that nobody seemed to mind. 

“Maybe you should invite the garden fairy god-mouse, too,” Harriet said. “She seems really bored in her cottage, and she bakes really great pies.” 

Apparently the fairy god-mouse had been eavesdropping on them magically all along, because she suddenly popped into the room in a gust of warm air that smelled like ripe apples. 

“I brought zucchini bread!” she said. 

Work on the jigsaw puzzle went even more quickly after that, and before long, Mus was putting the last piece in place. Lena and Grandmother clapped, Owlga hooted with pleasure, and the quail and Kvitha qwerked and flapped their wings appreciatively. They all had more tea and cookies and zucchini bread to fortify themselves, and Grandmother finished off the herring sandwiches. 

Owlga hung the enormous completed jigsaw puzzle up on the wall, behind a protective sheet of ice. 

“Let’s go cliff-diving to celebrate!” Harriet yelled. 

Lena and Mus explained that they did not actually cliff-dive (“Qwerk!” Mumfrey said smugly, which is Quail for, “Told you it was a myth.”), but Owlga was only too happy to oblige. She snapped her wings once again, transforming the snow-covered flatland outside her house into a splendid cliff, complete with an ice slide at the end. Harriet was so enormously pleased, she completely forgot to ask for a ride on Owlga’s back or to pass on her advice about acquiring some snow piranhas. 

Instead, she sat at the Snowl Queen’s ice table, drinking the fairy god-mouse’s chamomile tea, and listening to Grandmother tell a story about lemming mariners sailing to the lost continent of Lemuria. Her belly was full of zucchini bread, and her head was full of clashes with pirates on the high seas. Pirates, and krakens, and buried treasure -- now that sounded like an excellent plan for her next adventure.


End file.
